


Advanced Concealment Charms

by LittleMousling



Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Magic, Multi, Pining, Secrets, dc era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-01-20 14:35:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18527035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleMousling/pseuds/LittleMousling
Summary: Tommy's had years of practice hiding two big things from Jon, but he didn't plan for Emily.





	Advanced Concealment Charms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [okaystop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/okaystop/gifts).



> I was so excited to see the suggestion for an HP AU, okaystop! I hope this one fits the bill. :D

It all begins on a Saturday in May.

It really started years before that, of course. Tommy’s been hiding his magic from Jon for as long as they’ve been friends—the Kerry years, the campaign, the first few years in the White House. It’s just what life is for a wizard in the non-magical world. Tommy’s an outlier that way, but his parents weren’t magic and he’s the only one in the family, as far as he knows. 

He knows it’s not just him living like this; he just doesn’t run into many others. That eccentric professor at Kenyon; Lovett’s part-Veela boyfriend from State. That’s pretty much everyone he knows, until Emily. 

Emily, Jon’s new girlfriend, who greets him at the bar wearing the same subtle, unmistakable crossed-wands pin that he keeps on his suit jackets, the current style for recognizing other witches and wizards in public. “Tommy,” she says, not letting go of his hand. He’s sure she can see where his eyes have settled, the recognition on his face. “I’ve heard so much about you, and yet I feel certain I’m about to learn even more.”

“Oh, I could say the same,” he tells her, and both of them look over at Jon, who’s grinning and clueless.

“You guys are gonna get along so well,” he says. “I’m sure of it. I’ll go get first round, what does everybody want?”

Tommy glances at Emily again. “Uh, Heineken.”

“Oh, same,” Emily says. “Thanks, babe!”

Jon’s barely five feet from the table before Emily’s raising her eyebrows at Tommy, the question obvious on her face. “So Jon’s longtime bestie—”

“Uh, yeah,” Tommy says. “My family’s not magical, so it just—made more sense to me, to have a regular life. And you’re …?”

She shrugs. “I went to a liberal-arts college after Ilv. I wanted to see what the options were.”

“You went to Ilv? What house?”

Emily grins. “Wampus.”

Okay, he wasn’t expecting that. Maybe this girl’s a good fit for Jon after all. Except— “Jon’s not—”

“Duh,” she says. “If I only dated wizards I’d have to move back to my parents’ stupid enclave in—Jon!”

Jon’s stepped up with three beers carefully held in his splayed hands. “Looks like I was right about you two getting along! What’ve you been talking about?”

“Emily was telling me about her hometown,” Tommy fills in smoothly. He’s had a fuckton of practice with this kind of thing. Well—not this kind of thing exactly. “And I was telling her about Milton Academy.” 

Milton Academy is what his diploma says, anyway. It’s not where he actually went, but their records say he did, and his picture’s been magically slipped into yearbooks and Facebook albums. Ever since the first magic-proofed computer, pioneered while Tommy was still in school, there’s been a rising trend in the wizarding world to treat technology as part of their world, and not just something external to reject. Magic-proofed smartphones are, in Tommy’s view, the real reason Apple’s doing as well as it is; even the traditionalists are won over by the benefits of texts over owls.

“Oh, yeah, Tommy’s a private-school jackass, but we love him.” Jon grins and taps the neck of his beer against each of theirs. “Emily, tell him that story about when your high-school friends raided the private school.” 

Emily shoots Tommy a private smile. “Oh, yeah—my school friends wanted to break into this private school’s … house and cause some mayhem. The house was like … they were really into these big scary birds.”

Tommy has to stop himself from saying, “You broke into the Thunderbird dorm?” No way did she manage that. Tommy was a Thunderbird; their dorm is impenetrable. 

“You never told me that part!” Jon says. He tucks closer to Emily on the seat. He looks happy and settled, and Tommy’s stupid anxious heart is racing, thinking about all the ways this is a bad idea, all the things that could go wrong. All the secrets and the lies, everything Tommy’s had to keep from Jon that could come crashing down. 

She smirks. It looks irritatingly pretty on her. “And we stole their big bird sculpture and hid it,” she says. “It took them ages to find it.”

Wait— _that_ , Tommy had heard about, but everyone thought it was an inside job, a prank by the upper years. “That was you? I—uh, my cousin emailed me about it. Goes to that school.” Jon doesn’t look anything other than vaguely interested in the connection, thankfully. “Does anyone else know it was you?”

“I’m good at secrets,” Emily says, primly, and god, Tommy doesn’t know what to think about any of this. 

He manages to change the topic to Jon, Emily asking Tommy all about the dumb campaign stories and the rest. Emily’s a fun audience for Tommy’s million anecdotes about Jon, asking questions and giving him bigger laughs than he probably deserves. Magic doesn’t come up again, and Tommy at least gets to leave with the sense that Emily’s discreet. 

It rankles, though, every part of it, and he’s on the phone to Lovett before he even gets inside the house, passing Michael on the stairs. 

“I met Jon’s new girlfriend today,” he says, and then shuts his door behind him and casts his favorite silencing spell, one that ensures Michael and Cody will hear boring, muffled discussion of movies and politics instead of the real discussion. “She’s a witch.”

“Is that a euphemism?” Lovett knows about magic; he’s dating the scion of a very old wizarding family. He’s almost the only person Tommy feels like he can talk to about his real life, except a couple of school friends with non-magical parents. It’s isolating; he just thinks, still, that it’s less isolating than life in wizarding society, ignoring the outside world. 

Tommy flops down onto his bed. “No. It sure isn’t. She’s a Wampus.”

“I’m going to pretend I know what that means and just move the conversation forward,” Lovett tells him. Tommy always forgets that Ronan was home-schooled in magic, that Lovett doesn’t hear the usual kind of Ilv stories from him. Ronan’s such a classic Serpent, and it’s weird that he isn’t one, actually. “So Jon’s dating a witch, okay. What’s she like?”

“Gorgeous,” Tommy admits. “Young but like, probably more mature than him. Or me, for that matter. She’s working in Sherrod Brown’s office for the summer, might go to grad school. I don’t know. She makes him laugh, I guess.” 

“You sound thrilled,” Lovett says. “Just over the moon about your friend’s gorgeous, mature, funny girlfriend.”

“Fuck off, Lovett.” Tommy sighs. “It’s just—”

Lovett interrupts him, voice gentle. “It’s just you’re madly in love with him, and—”

“—I am not,” Tommy interrupts back. “Jesus, Lovett. I told you that stuff in confidence.” 

“Who do you think is listening in right now, the NSA? I mean, probably. But besides them, it’s just you and me, so—”

“ _So_ , it was just a crush and I got over it years ago,” Tommy lies. “That has nothing to do with anything.” 

“Uh-huh.” Lovett doesn’t sound convinced. “So, what, do we think she’s great for him? You don’t sound like it.”

Tommy hesitates. “It’s just—she’s hiding it from Jon. Which, I know everyone would say she’s right not to tell him anything after a few months, but it just seems—duplicitous.”

There’s a long pause. Tommy fills it instead of waiting for Lovett: “I know it sounds hypocritical, but it’s different. I would never—if I were _dating_ him, I’d never keep it from him.”

“But you got over that years ago,” Lovett says, drily. 

“I’ll hang up on you,” Tommy threatens. “It’s not like that. I just—something about her bugs me. What if she’s trying to use him to infiltrate the White House?”

“Don’t they have people to stop that kind of thing? Didn’t you have to do that whole magical SF-86 equivalent and like, report in so they can make sure you’re not messing with Obama? I think they can probably get ahead of somebody trying to seduce a speechwriter as their means to a coup.”

“It’s not like Jon had to fill out the other one! He wouldn’t know to report her at all, it’s not like she’s a foreign agent. God. Maybe I should report her.”

“Maybe,” Lovett says gently, “You should talk to her, wizard to wizard.” He snickers. “God, that never gets less ridiculous. Did I send you the picture of the Gandalf cake I had made for Ronan’s birthday? It was great.” 

“You did. Twice. Not entirely sure why he hasn’t broken up with you.”

“Too addicted to my ten-inch cock,” Lovett says, deadpan, and Tommy cracks up. 

“LA life is really loosening you up, Lovett. No entendre intended.”

“Entendre nonetheless accepted. Seriously, though. Just, like, take her out for coffee and find out her intentions. Jon’ll listen, if you tell him she’s bad news.” 

It’s good advice. Lovett always seems to have good advice, even though he always claims otherwise. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. Thanks.” 

After they hang up, Tommy stays where he is, an arm over his face. Lovett knows too much, he sometimes thinks. Those years Lovett lived here with them, Tommy revealed too much about himself. 

Tommy wonders, sometimes, if he’d be a more open person without the magic. Maybe he’d be happy to reveal himself, to be … vulnerable. To tell people when he likes them, before they find pretty blonde witches instead. 

Sometimes he’s not sure being a wizard has brought much good into his life, really. 

Anyway. He’s being pointlessly maudlin, and that’s not going to help with any of this. He sighs, and stands up, and apparates to the post office to send Emily Black an owl.

~

The most annoying thing about Emily, Tommy decides almost immediately into their dinner, is that she’s honestly really great. 

It’s much harder to resent and distrust her in person. Which is probably the mark of a very _good_ MACUSA spy, actually, but the more they talk, the less he can make himself feel suspicious. 

He’s glad Michael and Cody are traveling with the president; he and Emily can sit around the living room with only a regular silencing spell in case of passers-by, and jaw about Ilv and acquaintances they have in common over what’s turned into a couple of bottles of wine. It’s been too long since Tommy’s had that; the relentlessness of White House life doesn’t let him go back to Boston and see his magical friends much anymore. 

“—and then she left in a huff, and if you’ve never seen a pigeon animagus in a huff before, let me tell you, it was fucking incredible. I just about gave myself a hernia laughing.” 

Tommy’s laughing, too, hard enough that he has to wipe his eyes. “God. How long did it take them to get her out?”

“Twenty minutes to undo the anti-transfiguration spell, but then like half a day for her feathers to unruffle, psychologically speaking. But that part’s on the DL,” Emily adds, finger to her lips. “The nurse was really fond of me, she told me stuff sometimes. I was in and out of the infirmary all the time, and I really got to know her. We still owl sometimes.” 

“Nurse Jones?” Tommy asks, but Emily’s shaking her head.

“No, I think she retired. We had Auntie Kina. She mostly didn’t make a fuss if I showed up hexed or bruised or whatever. I was kind of rough-and-tumble back then, you know.”

Tommy guesses he’s starting to know. “Right up to stealing the Thunderbird? How the fuck did you manage that?”

“Shrinking spell, mostly,” she says. “Shutting it up was the hard part. We did it during dinner so we had a couple chances to try different things but in the end we had to just wrap the stupid beak in a couple of coats to muffle it. That thing’s fucking loud.”

She’s still saying it like it’s no big deal at all, like it’s just another Ilv story. It’s really fucking charming in a way it has no right to be; she just looks so casual about it, so unimpressed with her own actions. She’s lit up, too, and that’s part of the charm, how enthusiastic she is about the conversation. Maybe she’s as starved for magical contact as he is, or maybe she’s just a fun person. Either way, he can’t help but be drawn in. 

If Jon keeps dating her, at least Tommy’ll have this, he guesses. With Jon, even; she’ll have to tell him eventually. “When are you gonna tell him?” It comes out too loud, interrupting her, and he winces, but she just shrugs, accepting the change in subject.

“I don’t know. I’ve never had to tell anyone. I didn’t really think—I mean, you’ve seen him in action, right? I know he’s been kind of a player, and that’s how he came off when I met him. I didn’t think it would last, but …” She smiles to herself, gaze on the middle distance. “He’s really something, you know?”

Yeah, Tommy knows. The happy feelings from the evening start to fade, crowded out by a ball of tension behind his breastbone. “So—soon, then, maybe.”

“I think so. Yeah. And after that, you’ll—I assume you’ll tell him you’re a wizard?” 

Tommy doesn’t know. “Yeah.” He’ll have to. Or at least, there’ll be no more reason not to. And then the years of hiding it, of not letting himself think about Jon as a possibility, of swearing Lovett to secrecy about more than one thing, about jerking off and then curling up around his pillow and feeling like shit about it—they’ll all have been utter, stupid wastes of—

“Think I’ve had too much,” he says, just as abrupt, and sets his glass down. 

Emily eyes him. “Tell me another story about Jon,” she says. “While we’re on the topic. It’s the other thing we’ve got in common, right?”

Tommy shakes his head, but then says, “We used to live together, in Chicago. He was so—” _perfect_ “—luminous.” 

Emily gestures at the glass. “If you can say luminous, I think you’re okay.” Tommy laughs, but leaves it there.

“He just has this way of walking through the world, like nothing bad’s ever happened to him. And he collects people, a little. Not a lot of people, but he collects them and then you’re part of him for life. He followed his best friend to college, you know that? He likes to keep his people close, and everyone else is—he’s charming to everyone, but there’s his people and there’s everyone else.”

Emily takes a sip of her own wine, and then another. She sets down the empty glass and says, “Why didn’t you ever tell him?”

“The law,” Tommy says, bluntly, and then, softer, “I never wanted him to see me differently. Like we’re not part of the same team, anymore.” He doesn’t know why he’s admitting any of this, except that it’s all about to go away, anyway, so who cares. It’s all about to—all his careful secrecy is coming to an end, and he’d dreamed about that but in that dream there wasn’t an Emily telling Jon, just Tommy, sitting across a table holding his hand and trying to explain. 

Emily puts a hand on his leg. It sparks like magic—or, no, like arousal, he realizes a beat too late. Wine and laughter and complicated emotions, the classic cocktail for fucking things up. Maybe she thinks so, too; she pulls her hand back before she says, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Tommy says, but it comes out tight. Christ, he’s either going to cry or get hard, and neither of those things is something he wants to do with Jon’s new girlfriend. He shakes his head. “It’s stupid. Too much wine, that’s all.”

She puts a hand on his shoulder, this time, comforting. “Have you ever told anyone?” she asks, gentle.

Tommy shakes his head; he can’t talk anymore, or he’ll give too much away. He hasn’t gotten serious with anyone because he’s magic, and he hasn’t been open with anyone because he can’t, and it’s all wrapped up in years of wishing it were different, that he were just some non-magical guy who could walk up to Jon and say _let me take you out to dinner_. 

“You ever wish there were magical therapists?” Emily asks. “I hear there are a few in California, actually.” The magical world is barely up to speed with ear infections and diabetes, much less modern mental-health norms. It’s one of the reasons Tommy left; not the medical limitations, but all the other limitations. It’s too insular, when he cares about the whole world. It’s too self-protective, when they could do so much with their powers to help solve complex problems. Millions of people every year dying of hunger, and the magical world hoards gold; he’ll never be able to be part of that.

“Yeah,” he says, belatedly. “Yeah, that’d be good. I think as a people, we’re pretty—we’re probably more fucked-up than the rest.” It comes out okay, the need to cry receding as the topic broadens. “All the secrecy.”

She squeezes his shoulder. “Yeah. I think they keep secrets, too, but—ours is a big one. And you haven’t told anyone for, what—ten years?”

It’s about that, he guesses. “Helps with my job, I guess. Being good at secrets.”

She doesn’t seem to agree, or at least she doesn’t want to talk about that. She says, instead, “Talk to me, then. I’ll talk to you. I’ll trade you one? Not—don’t tell me state secrets, just—okay. My best friend from elementary school found out, accidentally, when I was fourteen. That summer. She thought I was at boarding school, regular boarding school, and then she saw my dad cooking through a window—the secrecy spell was only on the glass and we’d forgotten and left it open.

“My dad’s not showy but he’s old-school, you know? I don’t think he’s opened a cabinet with his hands since he was a kid. And she never talked to me again. Even after she was obliviated, she just couldn’t even look at me, like she remembered the emotional resonance of—being lied to, I guess, or that I was a freak. I don’t know. That’s why my parents moved to the enclave, mostly.” 

It’s not the most she’s spoken tonight, but it comes out the fastest, words close together. It’s a real admission, even though he can’t see at all that any of it was her fault or her responsibility. He can picture the scene, her friend’s shock. Tommy lives such a different life than most magical people; he doesn’t think he’s ever opened a cabinet with his wand, hasn’t used domestic magic in months. He can relate to Emily’s pain, though. He knows plenty about feeling responsible for more than your fair share of problems. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, feeling that it isn’t enough. “I—give me a second, I’ll think of something.”

“Tommy,” she says, and it’s so gentle that he almost knows what’s coming, just from the way her hand moves to cup his shoulder, thumb circling. “It’s okay. Tell me about Jon. You and Jon.”

“Legilimens,” he says, not quite a question, but she shakes her head.

“No. Just—observant.” She smiles at him. “I know I’m, like, the worst person you could tell, but at least you can tell me all of it. The magic’s why—?”

He lifts one hand to cover his face, and then makes himself drop it. “Yeah. No. Yeah. The magic’s the excuse, I don’t know.” 

She’s quiet, waiting to see if he’ll add something. He doesn’t know what else to say. “I’m happy for him,” he adds, finally. “Please believe me that I’m happy for him. He seems really settled, with you. It’s good.” 

“I didn’t think this was your secret plan to wait five years until he got a girlfriend and then seduce him.” It’s gentler than he deserves, maybe.

“Eight years,” he says. “That’s it, yeah. You’ve discovered my dastardly plan. What’s the— ‘Curses, foiled again.’”

“And you would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids,” Emily says, and laughs. “Okay. Good talk. You want to talk about wizarding gossip some more instead?”

“So much,” Tommy agrees. “Thanks, though. I know it’s, um. Probably weird for you.”

“We’re magic, Tommy. Weird is our normal. Tell me more about your dormmate and the illegal pet Jarvey.”

~

“I just got a pretty weird call from Jon,” Lovett says. As greetings go, it’s not the one Tommy was expecting when he picked up the phone. 

“Okay?”

“Is it possible you finally told him you’re bi?” Lovett asks, and Tommy feels his eyes widen. He checks that his officemate is out and shuts the door firmly.

“Excuse me? No. What? No.” _Emily_. He can’t fucking believe—

Lovett’s voice interrupts his thoughts. “Okay, well, it seems weird that he suddenly independently wants to know a lot about how to figure out if you’re into dudes, is all.” 

“He—what?”

“He rang me up as an authority on how to tell if you want to make out with a guy, so I could give him the signs. I pretty much said your dick gets hard thinking about it, so I don’t know what kind of conclusions he’s gonna draw from that, but he sounded pretty weird when he got off the phone.”

Tommy leans against the door, feeling too heavy to stay upright. “Okay,” he says, dully.

“This is good, right? You don’t sound thrilled.”

“I don’t—I don’t know what this is,” Tommy says. “He has a girlfriend. And I told her—I told her about how I feel about Jon.”

Lovett’s quiet for a long moment. “Okay. I can see how that’s … probably not the way you would want Jon to find out.” 

“No,” Tommy says. “No, it sure isn’t.”

~

Tommy’s not hiding. He’s just spending some alone time in his bedroom, curled up under the blankets, drawing firework patterns in bright colors on the underside of them. It’s been his favorite cheer-up method, other than alcohol, since he first learned it; he can do it wandless and usually does, drawing with his finger on the cotton. 

It’s not hiding; it’s just a reset. All this upheaval is bad for Tommy’s sense of place. Jon has a girlfriend; fine. Jon has a magical girlfriend; Tommy can deal with that. Jon has a magical girlfriend who’s charmed all of Tommy’s secrets out of him and told them to Jon—that’s a step farther than Tommy’s equilibrium can carry him.

Outside the blankets, there’s a faint and familiar _pop_. Tommy might have assumed he was imagining it, except for the distinct noise following of someone being very sick. He waves the colors away and peels the blankets away from his face. 

Just outside his window is Emily, leaning over—leaning over _Jon_ , for some fucking reason, Jon on Tommy’s tiny little balcony, still throwing up from the effects of the Side-Along. As Tommy stares, Jon’s stomach finishes emptying and he starts spitting, wiping his mouth. He’s aware enough, now, to realize where he is, and to stare around him in what Tommy can only call horror. “This is—how did we—”

“Jon, I’m a witch,” Emily says. She looks strangely nervous, much more than he’d expect from someone who apparently surprise-apparated her boyfriend as an opening gambit. “Tommy, can we come in?”

“What?” Jon says. He looks down towards the backyard, and then climbs in Tommy’s window; he’s never trusted that little balcony. He steps toward Tommy, staring like he can’t believe this is real. 

Emily’s still on the balcony, looking lost and scared. Regretful, maybe. Looking at her, Tommy remembers the story about her childhood best friend who won’t look at her or talk to her. He remembers that she’s never done this before, either.

He stands up, glad he’s in pj pants at least. “Jon. Uh. Okay, let’s start with—magic is real. Which I’m guessing that was a pretty good demo of, so—”

“Tom, you—you’re in on this?”

Tommy winces. “It’s not like that, Jon. Hang on a sec, let me explain.” He reaches for Jon’s arm, and Jon shies back. Jon’s never flinched from Tommy in his life, and it hurts, even though Tommy understands. Out of the corner of his eye, Tommy sees Emily climbing in the window and sitting, small, on his bed.

He pulls his hand back and tries words, instead. “A small portion of people, worldwide, can use magic. Mostly they’re related to each other, but sometimes a kid like me is born into a non-magical family.”

Jon just shakes his head, not accepting or not understanding. “Hang on,” Tommy says. “I’ll show you. We’ll show you.”

He has a mug full of pens on his desk; he dumps the pens out and _aguamenti_ s it full of fresh, cool water, gives it to Jon. Jon looks torn between wanting the taste out of his mouth, and wanting to avoid accepting the mug, but he takes it after a long moment and uses it to rinse and spit out the window.

Tommy doesn’t know what he’ll like, or even accept, so once Jon turns around he points his wand at a pillow and transfigures it into a rabbit, lets it hop around for a moment before turning it purple and polka-dotted. He changes the wallpaper: diagonal stripes to checkers to plaid, neon and muted. He’s having fun for once with magic, Emily beside him growing the rabbit bigger and giving it longer and softer fur. She looks less small herself now, like the magic is giving her some certainty back.

Tommy forgets, for a moment, why they’re doing this demonstration, right up until Jon says, full-throated, “What the fuck is this?”

They both stop. The rabbit hops closer, huge and fluffy now, and Tommy banishes it quickly. “Sorry,” Tommy says. “It’s just—it’s been a long time. Sorry.” 

“I don’t understand,” Jon says, and it’s almost plaintive. 

Tommy scrubs a hand over his face. Fuck, they’re not handling this well, are they. “Emily and I are both part of that small community. It’s just coincidence that—I didn’t know about Emily until we met, and she didn’t know about me. Kids with magic, we get trained to use it, and we get trained in hiding it from everyone else. I know this must be a, um, a shock, but I couldn’t tell you. I wanted to—since fucking 2004, I’ve wanted to tell you, Jon, but I couldn’t.”

“But Emily just did. _You_ just did,” Jon says, and he sounds angrier now than when he’d yelled. 

“When—when people get into relationships, when they’re serious about a non-magical person, that’s different,” Tommy says. “You can’t have a life with somebody and not tell them.” 

“I have a life with you!” Jon shouts. Tommy re-ups his silencing spell, just in case. “I’ve been making all my life choices around you for eight years, Tommy! We promised to leave together when we go, start a business—is that not a goddamn life?”

Emily sits back down on the end of Tommy’s bed, wrapping her arms around her knees. Tommy crosses to her and puts a hand on her shoulder. However badly she handled this, and however he feels about her telling Jon Tommy’s secrets, she’s still—she’s young, and she’s as scared of fucking this up as he is, Tommy thinks, just differently scared. 

“It’s something,” Tommy says. “It’s friendship.”

“Jesus, Tommy,” Jon says, and turns toward the wall, putting his hand over his face. He’s only silent for a moment before the questions start: does the president know? (Yes.) Is magic the real cause of major world events? (Sometimes, but not 9/11, not JFK, not Birmingham, rapidfire assurances.) Is magic a viable solution for major world problems? (Tommy thinks so, but only with enough people working together.)

He doesn’t ask the one that Tommy dreaded: couldn’t magic have saved a life, some specific important life. Jon hasn’t had loss like that, Tommy supposes. Jon hasn’t lost a parent; Jon hasn’t raged against the impotence of medicine and magic. 

Jon runs out of questions, eventually. Tommy shows him a few more things, and Emily contributes: small transfigurations, light shows, a summoned and banished guitar. Jon watches, silent, not soothed but no longer furious and tense. 

Eventually, they stop. Jon says, “I want to go home,” and Emily says, quietly, “One of us has to touch you, unless you mean on the Metro.” 

Jon looks between them. It feels like too much for Tommy, watching him visibly choose. Watching him step towards Emily in silence, and let her wrap an arm around him and disappear them away from Tommy’s bedroom. 

He’s pretty sure Emily looked apologetic as she left. It doesn’t really help.

~

_Pop._

“I might have to obliviate him,” Emily says, softly, behind him.

It’s been two days. Jon’s been out sick from work; he never does that. None of them ever take sick days unless there’s no physical chance of making it to the office. 

“Fuck,” Tommy mutters. “Did you really think apparating him with no warning was the way to go?”

She’s quiet enough that he turns around, and sees she’s crying, silently, tears streaming down her face. “Oh, jeez, I—sorry. Sorry. It’s not your fault.” He steps closer, tentatively wraps his arms around her. When she doesn’t move away, he tightens his grip, hugging her the way he’d want to be hugged. The way he wants to be hugged right now, really: thorough and comforting. “I don’t think people ever react well, right off the bat,” he says. “It’s all the same stuff that made me go into non-magical politics, you know? And Jon’s—we’ve been friends for eight years, and now everything’s different. I knew something he didn’t, the whole time.”

“Two things,” Emily corrects. She’s better at talking and crying than he is by a million miles; he wonders if that’s a girl thing, or just an Emily thing.

Tommy thinks about objecting and doesn’t. “Two things. And I take it you told him both of them?” 

“I can obliviate both of them,” she says, dully. “It—I told him because—” She shakes her head, inside the circle of his arms, hair brushing him. “God. This so isn’t the time. Just, I don’t think it was just you. Is just you. And I told him I think you’re hot, and if he wanted to—that I didn’t want him to think I’m the stumbling block, if he wanted—anyway. He’ll probably never talk to either of us again, so it doesn’t really matter.”

That’s just not an option. That can’t be an option. Tommy’s whole life, spreading out ahead of him with no Jon in it—nothing could be worse than that, emptier or sadder. He’s forgotten how to live life without Jon Favreau; he’s not prepared to go back to it.

“Let’s go talk to him again,” Tommy says. “Do you have firewhisky? Or Bear Bourbon? Or, hell, just Scotch or something?”

“I’ve got wine and I’ve got Bear Bourbon,” she says. “Take your pick.” 

“The hard stuff,” Tommy says. He could use the bear-hug effect, anyway. “Let’s pick it up and go to Jon’s. It’s—we have to try.”

It’s two easy apparitions before they’re in Jon’s hallway, knocking. Tommy can hear him behind the door, trying to decide what to do. “Hey,” he calls. “We brought alcohol. Please just let us in and let us talk to you?”

Jon opens the door, already turning away from it as they enter. “You could get in anyway,” he says, like that’s the only reason he unlocked it. 

“But we wouldn’t,” Tommy says. “Have I ever done that?”

“How the fuck do I know?” Jon asks. He’s still facing away, tracing his fingers over the closed piano cover. “You could have done lots of things, couldn’t you, and I wouldn’t know.”

Tommy’s not letting Jon be obliviated. He’s _not_. “Jon, will you look at me? Please. Look me in the face and tell me you think I’d have done anything to hurt you or invade your privacy or whatever else you’re imagining. You _know_ me. I know you don’t know this part, but it’s still me.”

Jon turns, slowly. He looks wretched, unshaved and drawn. He’s showered, hair still wet, but Tommy suspects he hasn’t been eating much. “You’d never have told me,” he says. “That’s the part—you’d never have told me, our whole lives. Our kids would be playing together and you’d still be hiding it from me.” 

Jon’s gaze shifts to Emily, and then to the floor, like he doesn’t know what he can say to her. 

Tommy says, “I was scared of this.” Jon looks up.

Tommy swallows, and tries to find the words. “I wanted to tell you. I wanted to have a reason to tell you, the same reason as Emily, and I was scared to tell you any of it. And as long as I didn’t tell you one thing, I couldn’t tell you the other, and it—it was easier to hide than to risk it. All this time, I’ve been terrified you’d find out either part and now you’ve found out both and it’s obviously—I was obviously right to—” Tommy shakes his head, out of words. 

Jon looks at Emily again, at Tommy. Back and forth, silently assessing something. Tommy needs him to say something, _anything_ , more than he needs oxygen right now. 

He clears his throat, finally. “Someone said something about alcohol?”

It’s Emily’s Bear Bourbon; she pours. “When you sip it, you only get a light hug. If you chug it, you’ll get really—I don’t recommend you chug it. Shots can be good, but maybe try the sipping first.”

Jon looks, despite all the evidence he’s seen so far, entirely skeptical as he lifts the glass to his mouth and takes a tiny sip. He startles, predictably; both Emily and Tommy already have their wands out to catch his glass in the air and recapture the spilled liquor before it hits the carpet. “What the fuck,” Jon says, but he’s reaching for the glass, game to try it again. Tommy’s just glad the effects work on non-magical people; he’d realized he wasn’t sure just as Jon lifted the glass to his lips. 

Jon bogarts the bottle, and they let him. Six hugs in, he’s not smiling, but he’s looser, and he’s beckoned Emily to sit next to him, her head on his shoulder. Tommy supposes he’s happy for them. Emily didn’t hide anything from Jon for eight years; it makes sense Jon can find a path back to her so easily. 

That just doesn’t make it any easier, to know Jon’s still angry with Tommy. 

Jon’s looking at him, at least. Not when Tommy’s paying attention; Jon looks away fast if he catches Tommy looking back. But he’s looking. Assessing, maybe. Or looking for signs of magic that he could have, should have somehow spotted years ago. Wizards can’t even spot each other on the street without cloaks or secret pins or other giveaways; Jon could never have figured it out, but Tommy understands that he might still feel stupid over it. 

Tommy borrows the bottle long enough to pour himself a shot, and downs it. He can take the rib-crushing hug right now. It feels good, better than good, to be squeezed tight. He rides it out, then sets the glass down and says, “I’ll go.”

Jon says, “Don’t,” too loud for the room, a burst of sound. Tommy stays where he is. 

“Can you,” Jon says, and stops. They wait, tense. “Can you show me—more?”

Tommy catches Emily’s eye; she looks as surprised as he is. She stands up, palming her wand, and maybe it’s the liquor or just the relief of Jon maybe, _maybe_ not hating them, having to be oblivious, but Tommy skips right over charms and transfiguration and everything elegant or showy and just points his wand at Emily’s feet and shouts, “ _Tarantallegra_!”

Emily’s laughing even before her feet start moving, realizing what he’s going to do. “Jackass,” she says, eyes bright. “ _Titillando_!” is her response, and then, before he can recover, a tail-growing hex. He cancels out the tickles but leaves the tail, pulls it out of the waistband of his chinos so it can wrap, prehensile, around Emily’s wand hand. “Hey!”

She’s still dancing in place, and he’s laughing, and when he glances back at Jon, Jon’s smiling, watching them. 

Emily unspells her feet, but Tommy waits, lets her hit him again: long green eyebrows, first, and then a hanging, canine tongue. He gets her with cat ears, wordless, and she shrieks with laughter when she reaches up to feel them. “Coachella, here I come!”

Maybe she’s feeling it, too, the sudden release of tension. The way Jon’s going along with all of this, standing up to pet the cat ears and then Tommy’s tail. Tommy sucks in a breath; it’s unexpectedly sensitive, Jon’s hand running down it too evocative to easily ignore. He catches Emily’s eye, and she undoes the tongue hex, lets him talk. 

“You get why the magical world has to hide, right? Salem and the inquisition and—those things didn’t kill wizards. They just killed innocent people.”

“Innocent people die every day from things it really seems like magic could stop,” Jon points out. It’s a familiar argument; it’s one Tommy has with himself, over and over. There’s something about Jon saying it, more than anything else that’s happened this evening, that makes Tommy realize it’s going to be okay. Jon’s engaging; he’s mad, but he’s not running away or shutting them out. 

Emily speaks before Tommy can. “We know. I can’t speak for Tommy but that’s why I’m here, and not just living a life where I never interact with non-magical people. There’s so much that could be bettered if we could figure out the ways to help intervene, I think. Just—the magical community has its own bad interventionist history, in some places at least.”

Jon purses his lips. “Like what?”

Tommy needs another shot if he’s going to talk about magical coups and assassinations, about Nicaragua and Lesotho. “I’m not an expert,” he says. “But I’ll tell you what I know. Can we sit?”

Jon sighs. “Yeah. No,” almost interrupting himself. “No, I—” Tommy can hear the alcohol in his voice. “I don’t want to talk about that right now. I want to talk about you never planning to tell me how you felt.” His voice shakes on the last word, just a little. 

Emily, beside them, subtly unspells her cat ears, Tommy’s tail and green eyebrows. Jon blinks at the sudden changes, then refocuses on Tommy. 

Tommy doesn’t have an answer for that. “I didn’t want to screw anything up, with you and me. And now there’s—Emily—” He gestures at her. “Emily’s awesome, man. I’m really—I’m really happy for you. Seriously.” He is. He’s sad for himself, but he’s happy for Jon. Emily’s someone special, that much is obvious. Not the magic, just her verve and joyfulness and her interest in doing good in the world. Those are things Jon deserves in his life. 

“I’m happy,” Jon says forcefully, like Tommy was going to fight him on it. “I’m happy with Emily.”

“I know.” This hurts. Tommy will do it, for Jon, but it hurts. “I know you are. I can tell. Ever since you met her, you’ve been happier.”

Emily steps back far enough to grab the bourbon and swigs from it, closes her eyes into the invisible hug. “Tommy, drink more,” she says, and hands him the bottle before stepping between them, hand on Jon’s chest. “Jon, babe? You’re being ridiculous.”

Jon’s eyebrows shoot up. “Excuse me?”

“No, I know, we’re the bad guys here, but you’re not mad at Tommy about the magic right now, are you? You’re mad because you could have been kissing him for eight years except you didn’t know that was an option. Which, that road runs both ways, babe. You could have asked him out, if you’d realized how you felt. But, like, we’re all young. There’s so much kissing left. So can you just—it’s driving me up the wall, here, not knowing what’s going to happen. So kiss him and break up with me or kiss him and break up with him or kiss him and date us both, but please just—kiss him and put everyone out of their misery.”

Emily, Tommy thinks dazedly, is the one who should be a speechwriter. Speech giver. Maybe she should run for office. He’d vote for her. Emily Black for president, 2024. 

He takes a long drink from the open bottle Emily handed him, braced against the too-tight hug. Then, because he can do it silently and because he wants to hope, he spells the taste out of his mouth to leave minty freshness behind. 

He says, because Jon hasn’t moved, “Please.” 

Jon steps closer slowly, like he hasn’t fully decided. There’s a whole new tension in the room now, Emily silent and watching. 

Tommy licks his lips, then wishes he hadn’t. Maybe it was the right instinct, though, because Jon steps in again, and puts a hand up to Tommy’s jaw. “I—even if—I’d still be your friend,” Tommy says. “You don’t have to do anything for that. Or at all. We can just—”

“Shh,” Jon murmurs, and kisses him. 

Tommy’s thought about this so much. Too much. He’s dreamed it and pictured it and planned it and avoided it, a whole cycle of thoughts for years and years. None of it remotely prepared him for the reality of Jon’s mouth on his, Jon’s warm hand on his skin. Tommy kisses back as well as he can manage, sucks Jon’s lip into his mouth and runs his hand down Jon’s side to rest on his hip. 

“Well,” Emily says, startling them both. “That actually worked.” She sounds amused, luckily, more than put out. “Um, so. Should I leave you guys to it?”

The alcohol and the arousal together are too much for Tommy’s ability to regulate his brain-mouth connection; that’s his excuse, at least, for why he says, “I thought you said I was hot?”

Emily huffs a laugh, surprised. “Uh—technically, I—yes?”

Tommy’s still holding Jon’s hip, turns his face to watch Jon reacting to all of this. Jon looks, if Tommy had to pick a phrase, _into it_. “Your eyes are gonna fall out of your head,” Tommy tells him, and Jon blinks and hides his expression. “No, um. It’s good. That’s—you like that part? The—Emily part?”

“I like all of Emily’s parts,” Jon tells them with a grin, suddenly in full player mode. “Top to bottom, great parts.”

Emily rolls her eyes, grinning at him. “Okay, Casanova. He means—”

“Yeah,” Jon interrupts. “I got it. Do you still think Tommy’s hot?”

“Maybe we shouldn’t put her on the spot,” Tommy mumbles, suddenly not so sure his methodology was entirely sound. “We can go, uh, think about stuff for a while—”

Emily’s pulling Tommy down to kiss her before he can finish his thought, leg around his hips. He breathes, “Oh, okay,” into her mouth, startled and pleased. He wasn’t expecting to kiss anyone today, much less Jon _and_ Jon’s hot, fun, magical girlfriend.

He feels giddy, suddenly. He wants everything good in the world for both of them. He wants them to feel the way he does, like he could fly. 

And … he can, because magic. “Jon? Tell me if you hate this. _Wingardium leviosa!_ ”

With a swish and a flick, Jon’s floating, just a little at first, and then when he gasps in surprised pleasure, Tommy lifts him higher, flies him over the back of the couch and around the edges of the room. “What the fuck!” Jon says, but it’s excited and laughing. “Tommy—another time, yes, but I’m getting dizzy.” 

Tommy sets him down, and Jon steps back to him and Emily, glowing. “Okay,” Jon says. “Magic is real. Magic is cool. You’re both—you’re both hot, and I’m, this is all a lot, but—” He looks at Emily, like she might have more answers. Tommy thinks that’s fair enough; she has, so far. 

“So … we should all go fool around,” Emily suggests. “I mean, not to be the young impatient one or anything, but like, we should, right?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Jon agrees. 

“Oh, god,” Tommy mumbles. “Listen, if I die of—unexpected happiness or priapism or something, never tell my mom the real circumstances?”

Emily sticks her tongue out at him, and he pulls her in to kiss it back into her mouth, thrilled with the way he’s sure she wants him to, that Jon wants him to. Emily grabs at his back, squeezing him to her, and he feels giddy, almost high on the sudden changes—good fucking changes, this time—in his life. He’s okay with this being a dream, as long as he never wakes up.

There’s warmth behind him suddenly that Tommy knows must be Jon, stepping in close, enclosing Tommy between the two of them. It’s more like a hug than anything explicitly sexual, and it makes him stop and breathe, forehead against Emily’s. 

“You know what this is?” Jon says. His tone is sweet and earnest. “This right here, between us … is magic.”

Tommy groans, Emily hits Jon with a pillow, and Jon cracks up.

Tommy has many an occasion, though, later, sitting with the two of them by the pool in LA while the dogs run around, to think Jon might have been right.


End file.
